Aerosol systems, comprising two or more aerosol containers, are well known and designed to allow two or more fluid components to be mixed when operating the system. These systems are, for example, known as two-component systems which are used for colours or hair tinting lotions or other fluids which need to be separated, until ejection, for avoiding an undesired mixture or a precipitated reaction of the components.
For this purpose, there is known a two-component system including two containers which are interleaved, wherein the outer container contains a valve portion operating the valve of the second container and at the same time ejecting the mixed fluid. These container systems have the disadvantage that a design of reusing the inner container is hard to accomplish.
DE 23 25 512 discloses an aerosol system containing three aerosol containers of which two aerosol containers include product fluids which are supposed to be mixed when operating the system, and a third container contains a cleaning fluid for cleaning parts of the head portion. The system according to the aforementioned document contains two actuating buttons, one for mixing/ejecting the product fluids and the other for cleaning the channel system being part of the head portion. Such a design does not exclude accidentally operating the wrong and/or both actuators which may have undesired consequences, depending on the field of application. Further, additional components in the form of a second actuator could increase costs and weight.
In such known applications for aerosol systems, it is desirable to separately keep different substances in different containers, either for later mixing during usage or for individually ejecting from a desired container. A head portion is designed to guide the fluids to an exhaust opening. Depending on the field of application, such a head portion can carry attachments such as a brush in the case of hair mascara.
In such applications, it is hardly avoidable that product fluids adhere to parts of the head portion when being ejected and thereby contaminating the channel system and other components. This might reduce the performance of the aerosol system as well as undesirably pollute other product fluids having the same flow path. It might therefore desirable or necessary to provide an aerosol container containing a cleaning fluid flowing through the channel system and the exhaust opening and thereby cleaning those parts. The cleaning fluid could simply be water, a solvent or something else. Instead of a liquid, the container containing the cleaning fluid could also contain a cleaning gas, where a cleaning is performed by a pressurized propellant.
When using aerosol systems with two or more aerosol containers, particular care needs to be taken in order to actuate the desired container and to avoid accidental ejection of unwanted fluids.